Album Review: D'Angelo- Live at The Jazz Cafe

I’m not sure if he needs it or not, but I would like to point out that I think we should all probably be #praying4DAngelo.

Oh D’Angelo. What happened man? Your triumphant comeback was going so well—and then all of a sudden, last August, after you had randomly scheduled some live dates in North America, you canceled most of them for an “undisclosed” health emergency. Those dates were never rescheduled, and no update on your mysterious health scare was shared.

D'Angelo, last year was supposed to be the year you released your mythical third album. Questlove had assured us that it was nearly done, and last summer, there were rumblings of a single. None of this ever materialized, however, and Questlove refuses to answer my tweets when I ask him, point blank, if he knows what the fuck is going on.

And now we've got this: a live album, recorded in 1995.

It’s an obvious cash grab, and I obviously fell right for it. I mean, I really couldn't pre-order this thing fast enough. Live at the Jazz Café, captures a live set that, for the most part, was previously unavailable. Bits of it were released as an EP available only in Japan, but that has long since been out of print, and this marks the first time that it has been presented in its entirety.

Live at the Jazz Café serves as an interesting artifact. Recorded two months after Brown Sugar’s release in the Unites States, the emphatic introduction before the show starts indicates that the album wasn't even out yet in the UK. Even with that being the case, D’Angelo was already on his way to being hyped as “the next big thing” from the sounds of it.

Aside from being touted as the first time this set has been available in its entirety, for what little promotion in advance Live has received, it’s noted an essay by “a member of D'Angelo’s management team,” as well as brief article and interview that accompanied the original Japanese pressing—translated, of course, are included in the CD booklet. This new essay, written by Alan Leeds, covers how exactly this show in London came to be, and how he picked the band that performs with him. It also includes a few glaring typos, and that only adds to the already obvious rushed and hasty packaging job given to Live.

Using a rather generic photo of D’Angelo hovering over a piano (taken from a Brown Sugar-era photo shoot) on the cover, the liner notes contain no photos taken at the show, or even photos of the venue itself.  Just the two aforementioned essays, and then the general fine print you find inside a CD booklet.

But what of the actual live show in question itself?

Clocking in at less than an hour, the set moves quickly—eight songs in the main set, and two in the encore. Things don't really start to pick up until D gets to the third song, the first “proper” song of the setlist—“Jonz in My Bones.” The two songs that come before it, “Fencewalk” and “Sweet Sticky Thing,” both covers, are each less than two minutes, serving as introductions of sorts, before things REALLY get underway.

For an artist with one, ten song album to his name at this point, the set makes use of D'Angelo’s penchant for covers—five of the ten songs, are in fact, cover songs. The five original songs chosen from Brown Sugar are, for obvious reasons, the more popular tracks—many of them singles: the titular track, “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” “Jonz in My Bones,” “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine,” and “Lady.”

At the time, and still to this day, people marvel at D'Angelo’s almost effortless ability to merge a mellower R&B vibe with a hip-hop aesthetic. In a live situation, however, part of that is lost, and there is a heavy emphasis on more of a high energy funk atmosphere—perhaps it’s the scratch guitar, or the very apparent bass lines. The band is obviously great—guitarist Mike Campbell steals the whole show with his solos—but at times it just comes off a little too smooth sounding. Like, quiet storm kind of smooth. Or the kind of stuff you may hear with a Local on the 8 forecast on The Weather Channel.

Not helping that case at all is the lack of a real horn section—with D'Angelo relying on a second keyboardist to play VERY fake sounding synth horn blasts when needed. It takes away from the music, giving it almost an unintentionally silly sound. Also, in listening to this a few times, I've realized how similar everything starts to become. There’s little variation in the atmosphere created by the band, as well as in the instrumentation.

D kind of turns the whole set into one long medley of sorts—specifically with the first two short songs leading into “Jonz,” the segue from “I'm Glad You're Mine” into “Lady,” and then turning songs like “Lady” and the final encore of “Brown Sugar” into extended jams. Sure he takes time to introduce the band during “Brown Sugar,” which is nice and all, but it’s like 10 minutes long now.

It honestly seems extraordinarily random and a little erroneous to release this now, 19 years after the fact, when it could have been kept under wraps until 2015, and paired up with remastered reissue of Brown Sugar. Despite the obvious shortcomings, Live at the Jazz Café is worth a listen, whether you are a fan of D'Angelo or not. For those that are fans, it is certainly just a stopgap release while we all continue to sit around, twiddling our thumbs, and waiting for any news of that third album to surface. It captures an artist who sounds like he’s still having fun, at a time before he became incredibly self-conscious in the wake of his “sex symbol” status due to the video for “How Does it Feel?”—the song that would unfortunately be the undoing of his promising career.

Live at The Jazz Cafe is available now via Virgin Records.